The Common Welsh Dragon Breeder
by amuse-bouche
Summary: High in the mountains of Wales, rehabilitators and tamers work hard in self-exile to protect the Common Welsh Green's. A poor misunderstood creature. Poor Dr. Alberta never thought she'd have to use social skills to save her precious St. George's.


Quick note: This is not a story about anyone recognizable although bits and characters are mentioned. However, no Harry, Ron, Hermione nor Nearly Headless Nick will be directly involved in the following text.

It does however take place in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Universe

Thank you for your time

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The Common Welsh Dragon Breeder

To those of you who don't know, or never considered it, being a dragon researcher and rehabilitator is hard work. It takes tolls on your body and mind in ways you would never imagine. You must be strong, strong enough to scale the misty mountains in all weather to steal eggs. You have to be smart enough to know a Hebridean Black's toenail from a Common Welsh Green's. And you must be pig-headed, stubborn and stupid enough to approach a Ukrainian Ironbelly, and look it straight in the eye. On top of all of that, you must be all of them at once.

But who couldn't help but feel proud when you successfully rear five squirming drag-lets to 18 foot beasts? Who couldn't feel proud when you and a small team of dragon tamers and rehabilitators manage to raise the population from 2,500 thousand to 5,000 in five years? And who couldn't be proud to not have lost their cool in the face of a lost and starving Hebridean Black, who had been pushed into Wales by a freak gale storm?

Of course, dragons aren't the only thing we typically have to deal with at St. George's Magical Creature Reservation. We also incubate eggs from all over the world of all types. During the very beginnings of the great war, one of our scientist, with his parents left the Wizarding World and became an engineer. When He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named finally died, he returned. But he felt alien and out of place among his own people. So he, in self exile, came to St. George's, fell in love with all types of magical creatures, and built state of the art incubators of which the Wizarding World has never seen. St. George's is very lucky to have the bearded, rather cagy, Mr. Edwards. It was in the incubation room, when my life took a bizarre turn. Of which, let me just state now, actions were taken that I am not proud of.

Mr. Edwards and I were admiring a pre-maturely hatched Griffin, swathed in a fuzzy pink blanket by an intern, fresh from Greece. Mr. Edward's long curly beard swung back and forth as he talked rapidly. "Those absolute bastards, carrying her in their _bare hands! _We'll be lucky if she doesn't develop pneumonia by the end of this week."

I stared down at her swollen, naked, pink face, her skin similar to raw chicken. Her beak looking enormous and severe against its delicate head. Her dark pupils visible through the thin skin of her eyelids. In order to accommodate the new comer, the incubation room was a lot warmer than usual. Mr. Edwards and I were down to our undershirts and still sweating.

"She is beautiful, though." I said, I wanted to hold her, feed her scraps of gently heated meat. A couple of pinkies initially, and then shaved rats in a couple of weeks.

Mr. Edwards grunted in agreement, wiping the sweat away from his face with the back of his wrist. Then attempting to clean his glasses on his damp t-shirt.

"Does she have a name?" I asked, nearly losing my composure as a tiny talon, with teeny nails clenched and unclenched around a blanket.

"Not that I know of, if you ask me, those fellows that brought her in were the shady sort. I think they stole the egg to start one of those breeding mills, then dropped her."

"Why would they bring her here then?"

"Because no one would steal twice from a griffin. They had to do something or lose time and energy getting another one."

It's usually best to leave Mr. Edwards with his conspiracy theories, and not divulge any further. I however, forgetting myself, opened my mouth to ask for his proof (a horrible mistake if I've ever seen one) but was saved by an intern. She left soon after, so I never knew much about her, nor do I remember her name.

"Dr. Alberta?" I saw her mouth from the other side of the glass door. I excused myself and stepped outside the incubation room, stripping off my rubber gloves and surgeon's mask as the cold air hit my bare arms. Goosebumps instantly rose from my arms and chest.

"Dr. Alberta, you have a visitor in the visitor center." She whispered, she clutched a clipboard and covered her mouth.

I immediately swept by her, not even stopping to thank the intern. We very rarely have visitors, and when we do it is almost always an emergency. I did not stop by the locker rooms to change out of my sweat covered, yellowing tank top either.

I ran into the visitor's center, scanning the room for a cracked egg needing to be immediately taken to the extraction center and then incubator, or a report of a dragon attack in the vicinity, my adrenaline raced, my mouth open, ready to shout orders.

Instead I was embraced by two gigantic arms in a threadbare robe. "Polythene!"

"Green? What-" My voice was completely lost into the man's large shoulder.

I may have to mention at this point, my well meaning, pure-blood mother married a Muggle man. Naturally he introduced her to a band called the Beatles, of which she immediately became enamored. She was conveniently listening to "Polythene Pam" right after giving birth to me, and in her potion-induced haze named me not Pam, not Prudence, or Eleanor, or Lucy, but Polythene. My father was a Chemist and thought it was a great name, and thought nothing of my future in primary school. While Green may be an unfortunate nickname, Polythene, unfortunately, is not.

I managed to extract myself by pushing on his large forearms. "Green! What are you doing here?" I attempted to make myself look serious and stared into his mismatched eyes.

"Jeez," he rambled on, a crooked smile on his large-jawed face. "I can't believe you still work here." He was glancing around the visitor's center which hadn't changed in at least thirty years. It wasn't hard to do, as he had grown to be gigantic in height. "I mean, it seems like we spent our entire childhood here-"

"Green!" He finally snapped to attention, "You're not here to reminisce are you?" It came out a lot more dry than I intended. Attempting to apologize I pushed on, "not that that's bad. It's just that, last I heard you were in a different country, and well when we were kids…" I trailed off, realizing I was making things a lot worse.

"You're right" he said playing with his sleeve, pulling on some loose threads, unraveling the edges further. "I'm here because of big news."

"News?"

"Daisy's getting married." He said, the bitterness did not escape my attention, it was particularly hard to miss on his face which usually held mischief and mirth. The type that used to give me hell as a kid. He released a humorless laugh, "She wants you to be the maid of honor."

"What?" I recoiled, obviously this was a joke. Green came all the way from god-knows-where in Asia to play a horrible prank on me. I should have known. "That's not possible, I was home last month. When did she get engaged? Why didn't she tell me? Why didn't my _mom _tell me?"

Green scrunched up his shoulder, unsuccessfully trying to make himself smaller. "Its a recent development. I just heard myself, a week ago. She wanted me to be the first to know, since we're the only family we have." I instantly felt guilty, he looked so miserable. But then suddenly perked up, and grabbed my upper arm, a sure sign he was going to try and be funny. "But, you know, you and your mom are almost like family, so you're the fifth to know!"

And apparently the last to know, "Yay." This also meant I'd have to go home, right as we were preparing for spawning season in the spring. "Okay, let me secure the pen house, and we'll head home."

Pulling on my Wellies, thermal shirt, regular shirt, sweater, and jacket I was ready to briefly brave the Welsh winter, and trudge through the ice, muck and sleet to make sure our herd of sheep was safe and secure. We'd need a new herd soon with the recent population boom, the Welsh Greens were going through them much faster than anticipated. I waved goodbye to Mr. Edwards and let my supervisor know I had to leave, then grabbed my duffle bag from the dorms.

We were close enough and familiar with the trip to feel comfortable apparating home, Green and I _popped _onto a mountain ledge just a half an hour walk away from where we grew up.

"God, nothings changed." I said. We stared at the town, unwilling to move, despite the cold, and approaching tea-time.

The little town was nestled into a valley a made up of rows and rows of little tin houses, gleaming in the nonexistent sun.

"It'll never change, it's cursed." Green instantly I felt too small, I was super aware of all of my limbs, knobby knees and numb toes.

"I feel like I never left."

"Me too."


End file.
